


Mortals

by CrunchySpaceFoods



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Blood, Death, Demon Bill Cipher, Human Bill Cipher, I guess???, Illness, Immortality, M/M, Murder, No underage, Past Lives, Reincarnation, Religion, Slow Burn, So much murder and not a single happy/peaceful death ×, Stabbing, but its not all permanent, graphic descriptions of death, historical innaccuracies, i cant fucking spell, not a lot of fluff, only in one chapter tho, satanic rituals, sick parents, unconsensually tickling people with a knife
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:35:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25694368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrunchySpaceFoods/pseuds/CrunchySpaceFoods
Summary: Two lovers in Europe spend their lives devoted to books and research when one of them meets an untimely fate.ON HIATUS - Please check chapter 3 for an author's note
Relationships: Bill Cipher/Dipper Pines
Comments: 7
Kudos: 16





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Just to get this out of the way- this is going to be full of historical inaccuracies. I've done lots of research but I'm also writing Gravity Falls fanfiction, so I'm not going to dedicate my entire life to making sure everything is 100% correct. If you want to do that for your own fics, go for it.
> 
> If anything is majorly inaccurate though, please do let me know. I might bend the rules and change some things just to help the story, but constructive criticism is incredibly helpful.

_15th Century Europe_

_Two men are sitting with their legs intertwined among piles of books and papers stacked up to be as tall as them. The brunet is focused on the book in front of him while the blond is writing with one hand, and holding the smaller man close with the other._

_The two had always preferred this; small rooms with no windows and just the two of them inside, and loathed the rare occasions when they had to go out. Their relationship consisted of secrets and stolen kisses in the dark. For in the public eye, they would have to maintain their appearance as friends and nothing more._

_Suddenly the brunet jumps up, "I've got it!" He shouts._

_The blond man quickly stands beside him, looking over the other's shoulder as he explains. They had finally found it; the answer of a long-asked question, an answer that might finally set them free._

_Candles were set up, names and phrases in a long-forgotten language were written on the floor, they cut their palms with a silver blade, and let their blood drip on to the center of the circle before reading the incantation from the deteriorating pages of the brown-haired man's book._

_Normally, they would've had better plans before performing the ritual. However, that would have taken time that the two lovers didn't have._

_The blond would not realize how big of a mistake that was until it was too late._

_For a moment after they had finished reciting then incantation, nothing happened. For a moment, they had thought nothing would happen, and they would only have to go back to their research. In the second after that moment, a blinding light burst from the center of the circle and the blond saw horrifying images that made his head feel as if it were splitting open._

_War, death, life, birth, the beginning and ends of universes and the civilizations within them, and bright blue flames._

_When it was it was over, after what seemed like an eternity of pain, he looked back up to his lover, only to find him lying dead on the floor._

_Blood stained his shirt and pooled onto the floor around him, his skin pale, and his brown eyes lifeless above the dried tears staining his cheeks. His face was twisted in agony, turned towards his partner as if calling out for him on the last of his dying breath._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone who has been reading my other fics - I promise I'm not ignoring them, nor abandoning them. I just have a lot of ideas swimming around in my head and I need to get them out on paper.
> 
> EDIT: By the way, I know that there's like, 50 countries in Europe and for this chapter, I purposely didn't specify. Some chapters will differ in terms of whether or not I name actual cities/states when setting a location depending on how important it is to the story and what I know about the country.


	2. Cain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And Cain said to Abel his brother, "Let us go out to the field," and when they were in the field Cain rose against Abel his brother and killed him."

_1501, Florence, Italy_

Shouts rang through the market on a hot summer's day. The sun was high above the townspeople milling about, and amongst them was an eighteen-year-old man with curly brown hair and eyes the color of the rich earth found in dense forests. 

The man is absentmindedly picking out a couple of the best fruits he can find from the stands, only half-listening to the gossip around him and not very interested in hearing about whatever artist is coming back home to Florence soon. He has no time to study the arts and judging by the sudden surge of people flooding into the market place, it's time to make his way back home to take care of his mother. 

Mason Paige was born an only child to his mother and father. His mother was an adventurous soul: someone who loved a good mystery and could tell the wildest stories. His father was an intelligent man, one who, from a young age, was considered gifted and soon became skillful in many trades. His father was also a coward who disappeared sixteen years ago, leaving his wife and two-year-old son behind with nothing but a note. 

With that, his father had taken the light in his mother's eyes, a light she herself had fought to get back for two years, only for a sickness to arrive and take that light again four years later. 

It had started off as a small cough; something she had thought would go away soon enough and had eventually turned into something she hoped she could hide long enough to give her son a good childhood. Unfortunately, when Mason was seventeen, he had to start taking care of his mother full-time.

Now eighteen, he was walking into his family's home with groceries tucked into his arms. The house showed his mother's adventurous spirit and his father's brilliant mind (two things that Mason was said to have inherited) and had compiled them into a rather large, cluttered mess. Newspapers and various maps adorned the walls while bookshelves overflowed, their books and papers spilled onto the floor beneath and rearranged neatly into piles by the house's current inhabitants. 

Mason made his way over to his mother's bedroom door, setting their food down on the table along the way. "Mom?" he called out as he knocked gently on the door.

No response came from the other side of the wood, assuming she was just resting he pushed the door open quietly to check in on her.

* * *

The doctor was called immediately. When the man arrived, he took one look at her and told the younger man that there was nothing he could do, she was too far gone and far too ill to live another day. 

Mason sat next to her bed, holding her hand long after the doctor had left. He watched her stare at the space in front of him, lids slowly traveling over glazed-over eyes in a strenuous effort to blink. Her chest hardly rose when she inhaled, but the whistling and wheezing of her breaths told the world around her that she was still alive. Her chest stutters for a moment, breath catching from her longs before slowly leaking out. He places a gentle kiss on her forehead as she exhales her last breath, her hand leaves his and he lets go; letting her finally fall into the land of eternal rest.

* * *

Not many arrived to her wake; any friends she had made before having Mason had mostly fallen away from her when she had fallen ill. However, between the few that had come to pay their respects, it was a nice, quiet service. 

Now Mason was finding himself on the edge of the market in the dark of the night, staring at his feet. Somehow he had already forgotten that the market was in between his home and his mother's place of rest, the same market he had come home from just before she had died. 

When Mason finally looked up, finally working up enough strength to walk the rest of the way home, he was met with the wide-eyed stare of a man with blond and black hair and two different colored eyes standing directly in the center of the stands. 

"William?" He whispered and watched as the other man's gaze went from shocked to fearful, his mouth dropped open but Mason didn't get to hear what he said before the world went dark. 

* * *

William was speechless. After Mason had died, he had traveled around the world assuming that his lover was gone for good. He had spent decades grieving, trying to get over him and heal wounds that seemed as if they would always bleed. 

When he came to Florence, he was happier than he had been in decades, he knew he would always grieve his love, but he also knew that he had to live on. If not for himself, then for Mason.

Then he saw the eyes he would never forget. 

A man dressed in black stood at the edge of the market staring at his feet. His curly brown hair hung over his eyes, but you could clearly see he had been crying. William had tried not to stare too long, but then the brown-haired man looked at him with mahogany eyes and a birthmark resting upon his forehead. 

_Mason_

He watched as recognition flooded his face and as the other man whispered his name.

Then he was gone.

A man who swayed and stumbled as if he were drunk, and shared the same dark curly hair as Mason had walked up to him with a large stone in hand and hit him in the side of the head with it, killing his love. 

William silently followed him home through the empty streets. He watched as the man fumbled with the door, a man who had ripped open old wounds for the blond and was now going to pay for it. 

The man hadn't yet noticed he was being followed, he hadn't noticed that his follower was there to quietly shut the door behind him while he was too drunk to remember to do so. 

He hadn't noticed that a the pair of heterochromatic eyes followed him as he walked into a room and flopped down onto a bed stripped of his sheets, and how they glowed as he drifted off into sleep.

In the quiet of the night, the light of a full moon fell on the sleeping man. The shadow of a figure rose from the dark, hand raised. A light swept over the man's body, from the sharp blade held in the shadow's hand. The hand raised higher before it was swiftly brought down and Mason's father met the same fate as his son. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tidbit: In 1501, Michelangelo returned to his birthplace in Florence, Italy to begin his work on the statue of David.
> 
> Comments/kudos/constructive criticism/etc greatly appreciated.


	3. Indefinite Hiatus

I am so so so sorry. I promise I'm not going to abandon this story.

I'm not going to go into specifics, but last week things with my family kind of blew up in my face. I've been trying to write or at least keep outlining and refining the story but I just can't. I have a lot of stuff I'm juggling between school, taking care of a family member, and trying to care for my own mental and physical health. Honestly, it's a lot and right now I just can't write about death much less write at all right now.

I'm not sure when I'll be back to writing this. Hopefully, it won't be long but I'm not sure. There are a lot of different things happening right now in my personal life and not one of them has any certainty. I promise I won't abandon this story and I'll be back soon enough with Very Cool chapters. 

Once again I am so so so sorry for the hiatus. Thank you for reading this story. I'll see you all soon.


End file.
